Emerson plays peek-a-boo with child care
VANCOUVER-KINGWAY – In a previous life, Emerson had plenty of time for the concerns of Collingwood Neighbourhood House, a centre funded through multiple levels of government, which provides a wide range of community services including highly regarded child care. Emerson had graced the centre with his presence a number of times in the past, including appearing there for two all-candidates debates, at the Centre’s request, on one occasion each in the 2004 and 2006 elections.
As a Liberal cabinet minister, Emerson had not only time but empathy and offered strong support for the centre’s mission. In previous meetings, Emerson “made it very clear that he was very supportive of our centre and was an advocate of child care and early learning programs,” according to Sharon Gregson, Director of Child Care Programs for Collingwood Neighbourhood House.
Speaking on behalf of Collingwood, Gregson said “our position is that we are confused, and we’ve requested a meeting with Minister Emerson in order to have him clarify his position on child care matters.”
Like many legitimate groups attempting to track down the peek-a-boo cabinet minister, they are still waiting, weeks later, for a response and answers to this day.
Collingwood, like other such centres in the city, is unable to meet the demand for its child care services. With more mothers than not participating in the paid workforce, there are not enough spaces to meet ever growing community needs. Citing a waiting list perennially measured in the hundreds, Gregson says that “our community needs child care funding” in order to meet expanding demands within the community, needs which are “particularly acute for infant and toddler child care”.
When asked about the Conservative election platform promise to provide tax cuts to businesses and organizations, Gregson pointed out research done by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada which showed a similar plan introduced in Ontario under Mike Harris’ government failed to deliver a single new child care space.
The reality of Ontario’s experience under the Harris government runs counter to the electioneering around the federal Conservative Party’s child subsidy gambit, an election promise of Stephen Harper’s which Liberal David Emerson pledged to fight, yet now as a Conservative cabinet minister, he is duty bound to support.
The federal Conservative ‘choice in child care plan’, reaffirmed after the election as a key government priority, doesn’t offer choices at all. Its a remix of a re-cycled Election 2004 promise – a personal tax credit, repackaged as a direct payment to parents to sell better during an election – with an empty promise that tax-credits ‘businesses and non-profit organizations’ will generate new child-care spaces. Harper says, without anything backing the assertion, the tax credit will generate 125,000 new spaces. Mike Harris said that too. Perhaps the idea came from Harris’s old finance minister, Jim Flaherty, which is now Stephen Harper’s new finance minister.
Non-profit organizations like Collingwood, which naturally pay no taxes, get no benefit whatsoever from tax credits. Like the Harris-Flaherty plan for Ontario, the Harper-Flaherty plan isn’t going to deliver for Canada’s working parents either.
What centres like Collingwood really need is capital funding for new space development, and reliable operational funding, not cuts which the current government has promised.
As the Conservative government has already announced that it will terminate certain federal funding programs as of next spring – creating significant funding shortfalls – what organizations like Collingwood really need is their Member of Parliament to come out of hiding and do his job. It remains to be seen how much longer Emerson can claim to be effective if his office won’t even acknowledge a request for a meeting, much less schedule one.
One can’t help but wonder if supporting child-care was one of the prices Emerson had to pay, in order to get elected – twice, as a liberal – but is a real child-care plan one of the things he’s entirely happy to throw away? His lack of responsiveness to apolitical groups, like Collingwood, and his principle preoccupation with bridges, ports, and trade seems to answer the question, even if he won’t.
If you are concerned about this issue visit www.buildchildcare.ca and sign their petition… and get informed!